With the disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, still creating headlines as various authorities seem to bungle their efforts to contain or control the spill and the subsequent burn of thousands of gallons of vinyl chloride, Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger is asking important questions and wants answers.

She told the Shawangunk Journal that she is sending letters to federal regulators and CSX, the rail operator with 38 miles of track in Ulster that travels along the Hudson River and right through the heart of Kingston. Her key question to the government is to know when and what hazardous materials are passing through the county. “We want advance notice of those things.”

Metzger noted that every week, 200 trains pass through Ulster County. “What is on that train?” has become a question with life or death ramifications for individuals and communities today.

Metzger explained, “The rail line of concern for us is CSX, their freight line runs through seven municipalities, including densely populated areas in Kingston. We have 38 miles of track running along the Hudson. Any disaster there is a threat to the Hudson and drinking water for millions of people.”

CSX formed in 1980 from the merger of Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries, two large firms that controlled railroads in the eastern United States.

In her letter to CSX, Metzger requested that the company do its part to have adequate staffing levels and maintain their tracks, at least in Ulster County.

Cargo Transparency

Track maintenance has become an issue all over the U.S., considering that on average there are 1,700 derailments every year, and of those about 25 involve hazardous chemicals. Another issue is the one that Metzger wants answers for, which is dishonesty in the train manifests. The train that derailed at East Palestine was reportedly 149 cars long and classified as “general merchandise” without any indications concerning hazardous materials that can burn.

East Palestine is a small town, with a population of 4,700, situated close to the state line and about halfway between Pittsburgh and Youngstown, Ohio. The railway involved is Norfolk Southern, which also has a line that runs through Campbell Hall in Orange County, a quiet station known to anyone taking the Metro North/Port Jervis line to and from Secaucus, New Jersey.

Because the Norfolk Southern train had some cars containing semolina wheat and vegetables as well as about 20 cars carrying hazardous chemicals, the entire train was not labeled hazardous, and officials were not notified the train would be passing through the state. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called for this to change at a press conference last week: “We should know when we have trains carrying hazardous materials through Ohio,” he said.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY18) said he wrote a letter to CSX President and CEO Joseph Hinrichs “demanding” the company adopt additional safety standards to prevent similar accidents from happening locally.

“We’ve seen a disturbing pattern of CSX consistently putting profit over safety, creating serious risk that what happened in Ohio could repeat itself right here in the Hudson Valley,” said Ryan. “Just like Norfolk Southern, CSX and other big rail corporations spent millions lobbying the last president to deregulate the railways, resulting in the administration withdrawing a proposal to require faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials and ending regular rail safety audits of railroads. The American people are now paying the price for this corporate greed. I’m calling on CSX to immediately and proactively adopt common-sense safety standards, and demanding that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hold a hearing so that we can protect families in the Hudson Valley and across the United States.”

The Toxic Event

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released information about aspects of the crash. A single bearing in a single wheel overheated and jammed. That sent 38 cars off the rails, including 11 carrying hazardous chemicals. Of those, four were filled with pressurized vinyl chloride.

Vinyl chloride is a colorless gas, a known carcinogen, and a vital ingredient in making plastics. It is also flammable and in burning tends to generate byproducts including hydrogen chloride and small amounts of phosgene, which was used in gas shells in World War I. Vinyl chloride has mostly been studied for its toxic effects on workers with long exposures to it. Cancers of the brain and liver, lymphoma, and leukemia have been reported. Much less research has been done on environmental effects of small amounts. Released into the air, vinyl chloride breaks down within a day or two. In the soil it can persist for much longer.

Anyone who has been following pollution stories with hazardous chemicals will have observed that it is the “halogens” group of six elements that show up almost every time; that is, compounds based on fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and less frequently iodine. They are highly reactive and can form an almost infinite number of compounds. They are also harmful to all living things, although some are essential, like good old salt, sodium chloride.

Other chemicals identified as being on that train include ethylene glycol, a solvent found in paints and inks, and also highly toxic, plus a large amount of butyl acrylate, which leaked from a ruptured tanker. A “plume” of butyl acrylate formed in the river, flowed to the Ohio River and caused the Greater Cincinnati water system to close off any access to the water reserve as that plume passed by. The International Agency of Research on Cancer and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have classified acrylates as possible carcinogens.

So the scene at East Palestine, by the railway tracks in the aftermath, posed a horrendous issue for first responders and the local fire chief. As the fire from the crash raged, In the middle of blaze were these five pressurized tankers loaded with vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate. The fear was that they would soon explode, which would potentially harm fire fighters and hurl contaminated fragments far and wide, and release fireballs of burning hazardous chemicals into the air. The fire chief made the decision to burn the tanks and their contents.

Backing up his decision the NTSB investigators found that aluminum covers over pressure valves on three of the tank cars had melted. That prevented the valves from releasing the trapped gas to reduce risk of fiery blasts. The valve failures forced officials to breach the tanker cars and burn their contents. That created the monstrous-looking black cloud of smoke and toxics that became a global sensation on TV and internet.

Unfortunately, a fire like that does not achieve the temperatures found in a commercial incinerator (2,200ºF), which consume plastics “cleanly” to produce hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, without contamination with dioxins. Dioxins are created when chlorinated carbon materials are burned and they can remain in human bodies or the ground, for many years.

And thus the fear is that the black cloud that flowed out of East Palestine and into western Pennsylvania, and even as far as the Hudson valley, carried dioxins, including the infamous Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), which is a carcinogen known to damage the immune system.

Dioxins, it should be noted, are found everywhere; they are created in a wood fire, for instance, but the dangerous TCDD form is rarer and is caused by heating of chlorinated materials. An old-fashioned burn barrel with plastics in it will likely have some, for instance.

Rethinking Safety Measures

Metzger sent another letter on February 27 to all the county supervisors and mayors, regarding the Ulster Count Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan, and the officials’ request that it be updated and the public informed in response to the disaster, now being called the “Chernobyl” of East Ohio.

In her comments to the Shawangunk Journal, Metzger sought to broaden out the area of concern, observing that this is a critical time and that accepted ways of governance have failed the American people. She said, “I was just appointed chair of the New York Association of Counties Climate Action Committee. This is a new committee, new chair, and had our first session last week. One resolution passed called on the state legislature and governor to pass an extended producer responsibility law concerning packaging and waste. There are two bills right now introduced in the state legislature to prohibit toxic and dangerous chemicals in packaging and on the list is polyvinylchloride.”

With the tsunami of publicity concerning the East Palestine derailment and subsequent pollution issues, it is possible that New York State will get serious about this issue.

At the federal level there has been a complete block on any reexamination of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which authorizes the EPA to ban or restrict a handful of chemicals, while always choosing to regulate in ways that are the “least burdensome” to corporations. The joke has long been that the law was basically written by the chemical industry and reviewed by an executive of DuPont. The law leaves more than 60,000 chemicals on the market free of any review of their risks to human health.

Essentially, chemicals are allowed here in America unless danger to human health is proven. That can take years, or decades. In the European Union, concern over this issue lead to the REACH laws, (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals), which took effect in 2007. Many thousands of chemicals that are common in the U.S. are banned in the EU.

The same relaxed attitude to public safety extends to industrial wastes and pesticides. There are more than 30,000 government-registered pesticides with dangerous chemicals and only 20 or so are regulated as hazardous waste and not allowed in landfills.

And the same issues, over mighty powerful corporate lobbies and feeble federal regulation, afflict the railways. Trains have grown longer and longer with fewer and fewer staff on board. Issues of railway inspectors being pressured by management to ignore things like the bad bearing that caused the disaster at East Palestine are commonly reported, but there is no sign of any effective political will to do anything about it.

“What we have to do is review entirely how we package foods and water,” Metzger suggested. “The use of single-use plastic containers has to stop. Returnable and recyclable containers are the only safe way to go.”

In her letter to county supervisors, Metzger wrote, “It is important to note that while the Ohio derailment disaster has elevated public awareness of the dangers of train derailments involving hazardous materials, Ulster County has been preparing for such incidents for some time. The Ulster County Department of Emergency Services hosted an AWR 147 Rail Car Incident Response Training the first week of February 2023, and I am pleased to report two eight-hour trainings were held, one each in the town of Ulster and the town of Marlborough, and were well-attended by over 60 first responders from municipalities across the county. This awareness-level course is designed to increase the knowledge of first responders in recognizing and characterizing the different types of rail cars, potential leaks, and courses of action to be taken based on initial site assessment.”

CSX Responds

On March 7, CSX issued a response to the increasing calls for safety upgrades. “CSX understands that safety is the foundation of our business, which depends upon our ability to work collaboratively as a ONE CSX team to deliver customers’ freight safely, reliably and sustainably,” said Joe Hinrichs, president and chief executive officer. “Everything we do at our company is centered around our recognition that the safety of our employees and the communities where we operate is paramount.”

The company said it had been “transforming” its operating model since 2017, noting that it spent “$500 million more on core infrastructure than in the previous five-year period and has continued to increase spending each year.” Additional upgrades noted by CSX included updating certain “hot bearing detectors” across its rail line, allowing for remote monitoring of overheated rail car wheel bearings, increasing the monitoring and assessment of track and train conditions for potential issues, and adding more bearing detectors on the tracks.

“As CSX continues to prioritize the safe transport of critical freight across the nation, the company is committed to maintaining its focus on proactively taking measures to protect its employees, communities and customers.”